❤️ Seasonal collection
Valentine's Day Recipes: Chocolate Cakes, Breakfast in Bed and a Drink for Two
Chocolate, mostly. Molten lava cakes you can make ahead, the red velvet with a legend nobody can prove, Vienna's Sachertorte and Capri's flourless torta caprese, plus breakfast in bed and something to drink.
🍫 Chocolate cake
From individual lava cakes to a whole torte.
Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes
The 1990s restaurant dessert at home: individual chocolate cakes baked hot and fast so the outside sets and the center flows when you cut in, with a make-ahead option.
Red Velvet Cake
The burgundy-red, mildly chocolate layer cake with buttermilk and a touch of vinegar, stacked four layers high with a fluffy white frosting the 1950s way.
Sachertorte (Viennese Chocolate Apricot Torte)
Vienna's famous chocolate torte: a light, dark chocolate sponge split and filled with apricot jam, brushed with more jam and covered in a glossy poured chocolate glaze, served with unsweetened whipped cream.
Torta Caprese (Italian Chocolate Almond Cake from Capri)
Capri's chocolate cake made with ground almonds instead of wheat flour: dark chocolate, butter and whipped egg whites baked into a cake with a crackly top and a dense, moist middle.
Kladdkaka (Swedish Sticky Chocolate Cake)
Sweden's café favorite: a quick chocolate cake with no rising agent, baked just long enough to set the crust while the center stays gooey and sticky, served with whipped cream and berries.
French Mi-Cuit Chocolate Cake (Pierre Hermé's Five-Ingredient Fondant)
France's soft-centered chocolate cake, the way pastry chef Pierre Hermé shared it in 2020: butter, sugar, eggs, a little flour and a lot of dark chocolate, baked until the edges set and the middle stays fudgy.
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake)
The real Black Forest cake: three layers of chocolate sponge brushed with kirsch, sour cherries and a light vanilla cream, covered in cream and dark chocolate shavings, the way the Black Forest's own tourism board makes it.
🥞 Breakfast in bed
Easy to carry on a tray.
Japanese Soufflé Pancakes
Tall, wobbling pancakes made by folding a stiff meringue into a light yolk batter, then cooking them low and slow under a lid with a splash of water for steam.
Pain Perdu (French "Lost Bread")
Thick slices of day-old brioche soaked in vanilla milk, eggs and sugar, browned in butter, then sugared and finished in a hot oven until the tops caramelize, served as a dessert the French way.
The Dutch Baby (Seattle Oven Pancake)
A blender batter of eggs, milk and flour poured into a skillet of sizzling butter and baked at 425°F until it puffs up high around the edges, served the original way with lemon and powdered sugar.
🥂 Something to drink
Thick Parisian hot chocolate, a classic cocktail for adults 21 and over, or a mocktail.
Parisian Chocolat Chaud
Whole milk and very good bittersweet chocolate, nothing else but an optional spoon of brown sugar, simmered until thick and served in tiny cups the Paris café way. Inspired by the famous thick chocolate at Angelina; not Angelina's recipe.
Manhattan
Rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters stirred ice cold and served up with a cherry: New York's whiskey classic, and a famous origin story that cannot be true.
Classic Margarita
Blanco tequila, orange liqueur and fresh lime, shaken hard and poured over fresh ice in a half salt-rimmed glass: the sour that Mexico, Texas and California all claim.
Shirley Temple
The original American mocktail: cold ginger ale and a pour of grenadine over ice, with two maraschino cherries, the pink drink named for a child star who said she never liked it.